Automobiles with retractable headlights have been on the market for many years. On the other hand, in the hitherto known radio-controlled toy vehicles, only forward and backward movement and steering are regulated by the so-called two channel control. (Conventionally one channel comprises two signal waves.) It would be quite easy to make the headlight of a toy auto retractable by adding one control channel. But such a toy auto with retractable headlights does not yet appear until today.
The reason therefor probably is that another motor is required even for moving the headlights, a considerable space is necessary and the mechanism for smoothly raising and retracting the headlights is more difficult to design than it first anticipated.
I have been engaged in the designing of mechanisms for raising and retracting the headlights of toy autos by means of radio control. The principle is quite easy, that is, it is all right, if the rotational movement of a motor shaft is converted into a motion to turn up and turn down the headlights. But it was more difficult than imagined to design a mechanism that functions smoothly and that is robust enough to withstand the use as a toy.
For that purpose, it was thought that two cams were necessary, one for converting the rotation of a motor to partial reversible rotation of a shaft and the other for converting the partial reversible rotation of said shaft to a motion for raising and retracting a headlight. And if both the raising movement and retracting movement were to be effected by means of cam mechanism, frictional resistance increased and such a cam mechanism did not function smoothly. If a headlight in the raised position with such a cam mechanism was subjected to impact, the mechanism lacked buffer function and therefore was easily broken. Thus I could not succeed in creating a commercially acceptable product.
I dismissed the idea to provide a mechanism to stop the headlight in its raised position, and adopted an idea to control a motor only on and off with a pushbutton switch by means of a single signal wave, whereby the motor simply continues to rotate while in the on state and is at rest in the off state, to employ a cam of the shape which enables the headlight to remain for a longer time at the most raised position and the most retracted position in comparison with the moving periods, so that the operator can manually turn the switch off during the period when the headlight is raised or retracted. Further the headlight is supported by a resilient means so that it is normally kept in the raised position and is retracted by the action of the cam. Thus the headlight is not only very smoothly raised and retracted but also it can be automatically retracted in resistance to said resilient means even if external force is applied thereto while it is in the raised position, and thus breakage is avoided. In this way I have completed this invention.